reims rhymes

a selection of words that nearly fit the bill, when pronounced with the slightest hint of an english accent: chance, dance, enhance, expanse, finance, france, glance, lance, perchance, prance, romance, stance, trance.

as french follows its rules much more closely than english does, i used to think that i had french pronunciation down. that only lasted until i arrived in champagne and was confronted with... rhymes? reams? romes? this is a common question asked by anglophones on the internet, it seems. we like to imagine that the title of this post would rhyme.

the answer: see an explanation of the proper pronunciation and an mp3 here. anyway, what's in a name? that which we call reims --

on approach, reims looks like a major metropolitan area (tm) -- your first glimpse of it is massive buildings rising up out of the flat french countryside through which you've been driving for half an hour -- but reportedly, all the typical city stuff is located on one (big, beautiful) street. other than that, there exist (also reportedly): 1) a grand cathedral, 2) a university, and 3) parks aplenty*. the first i heard of reims was in a book about medieval feudalism. it's an old place. according to the official reims tourism site, the city is also an official "symbol of peace between germany and france"; it's where the germans surrendered to the allies in 1945.

it was only just a tram

reims does have a tramway, as pictured above. it only has eighty thousand more people than college station. hint, hint.

*just french things: when you enter a city (or town, or village), you might see a sign underneath that reads "ville fleurie" with a row of up to four little flowers underneath. those flowers are like the michelin stars of green spaces in cities. more here!